IDIOM (2017)

_imagination/interpretation

Prague, Cross Club, 15th, 22nd October 2017

Last year we organized the first edition of Idiom Festival, which was a part of the “This is Poland/To Polska właśnie” program. The project was co-financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland (Promesa 2016). We were analyzing the issue of “Polishness” and stereotypes about Polish culture and tradition in both art and society. The performances which we decided to present were focused on the body’s language in relation to the alphabet, dance as a way of communication and a space for intercultural dialogue, and the stereotype of a Pole. We wondered on the meaning of calling a dance “Polish” in modern creative reality, when artists move between art centers much more often, create their performances as coproductions with others, and are immersed in mobility: of projects, thoughts, and ideas.

Idiom 2017 employs a new approach to the project. By arranging art residency programs of two Polish choreographers, Małgorzata Haduch and Irena Lipińska, who will cooperate with Prague artists, we want to create a chance for an inspiring meeting of Czech and Polish artists, and to open our activities to an element of surprise and process instead of a finished product. We have invited Irena Lipińska, a Wrocław-based choreographer and performer, and Małgorzata Haduch, a Cracow choreographer and pedagogist. Lipińska will cooperate with a Czech musician, while Haduch will lead a three-person dance group, who will work on a given subject under her supervision. The original works created during this residence will first be presented in Czech Republic (on October 15th and 22nd), and later in Poland. The subject matter undertaken by both residency programs will be the relation between _imagination/interpretation, and their field of study will be new choreography and experimental music.

This year we wish to continue the idea of Idiom Festival and keep focusing on the idiomatic (concrete) features of dance and movement. However, this time we want to talk about experiences that seemingly can be neither described nor expressed verbally.

Paradoxically, it is that inability to discuss or imagine them, which makes them idiomatic. We want to find in dance and choreography that, which, colloquially speaking, is “unimaginable”.

Artists’ residency stay in Prague will serve to develop original choreographic projects regarding these notions which seem difficult to imagine, but eventually may become verbalized: the _imagination/interpretation relation. Her starting point will be the indescribable: the symptomatic sphere, which in dance is usually associated with difficulties in naming and defining. This chorographical research will contain experiments in order to check how much does the indescribable affect choreography (e.g. during a dance that is improvised, or reacts to other stimuli, such as music); to what degree choreographers use the imagination of their object of study, how they understand verbalization trough movement, and what tools they use to describe their actions. How does the sphere of the indescribable begin to manifest in dance, why dance is an art form that is so difficult to describe, what does it mean to say that movement is the universal language of expression, and how to talk about this experience.

Final shows will be performed on 15th and 22nd of October 2016 in Cross Club in Prague (free admission, crossclub.cz)

Małgorzata Haduch

A dancer and choreographer, she graduated from School for New Dance Development in Amsterdam. Has strong ties with the Dutch free jazz scene. In 2006, she established Unfinished Company, an Amsterdam-based group associating international artists from various fields. Recipient of scholarship from danceWEB in Vienna and the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland (2011), as well as residency project from Solo Project in Poznań’s Stary Browar (2009). Author of the following shows: Zona Segura (2009), Wielka Inwencja na spragnione theorbo, uśpiony kontrabas i cztery tancerki (2011). She heads FREE THE DANCE program in Cracow, a series of performances by musicians and dancers, who create improvisation at the contact point of the fields of music and dance. Since 2011, she regularly teaches David Zambrano’s technique of Flying Low and Passing Through compositions.

A performer, dancer, and choreographer. She received a scholarship from the Alternative Dance Academy in Poznań (2011) and was a resident of Solo Project for young choreographers by the Art Stations Foundation (2011). Her solo pieces include: hydrohypno, line, Kompilacje, DNACE, dwa na jeden, LU2077. After receiving a scholarship from the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of Poland, she developed !GROT! (2014) in collaboration with the new media artist Paweł Janicki. The same year she participated in a choreographic exchange program between Poland and Philadelphia, USA as well as the choreography project Isabelle Schad Collective Jumps. She collaborates with contemporary music and new media artists. She conducts dance and movement workshops, including ones for future actors, as well and children and adults with psychological disorders and movement disabilities.

Organizer: Performat Foundation

Partners: European Capital of Culture Wrocław 2016, Artist in Residence Programme AIR Wro, Cross Club

The study visit of Irena Lipińska in Prague is organised within the framework of Partner Programme of Residencies and Study Visits Culture of Mobility, which is organised by the Wrocław 2016 Office within the framework of Artist In Residence Programme AIR Wro.